Microsoft plays down the importance of app-counting

If you're into counting numbers, there's no denying that Windows Phone 7 is a long, long way behind both Android and iOS when it comes to available apps.

And no matter how Microsoft paints the numbers that gap isn't going to be closing anytime soon. So Microsoft is changing tack, saying it's not quantity it's after, it's quality.

No surprise there, you might be thinking, but Windows Phone director Brandon Watson insists this is no mere attempt to gloss over a lack of numbers.

“We recognise the importance of getting great apps on our platform and not artificially inflating the number of actual apps available to customer by listing 'wallpapers' as a category, or perhaps allowing competitors' apps to run on the platform to increase 'tonnage',” Watson wrote on the Windows blog.

That last remark, of course, refers to Windows Phone 7 rival RIM and its recent decision to allow Android apps to run on its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Yet while Watson was doing his bit to play down the numbers in one sense, he didn't miss the chance to big up WinPho when the stats played out right. The platform, he says, “generated 10,000 apps faster than anyone else, without padding the stats”.

It doesn't happen often, but hey: for once they are right!
Steve Litchfield of AllAboutSymbian recently published an in-depth comparison of popular iOS apps vs Ovi Store (and built-in) apps for Symbian phones. The results are quite surprising (not to me )=>
Sure, even Mr Symbian doesn't discount the sheer dominance by number, and he does give credit where credit is due.
However, for almost all TOP iphone apps (except for gaming) there is a Symbian alternative - or, indeed the same app. Moreover, the functionality delivered by a host of popular iPhone apps is actually built into every Symbian phone, so that there really is no need for a few hundred devs to bring an app to the store.
If you want to verball b*tch-slap me, read the article first here